


When in Love

by Omnicurls



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicurls/pseuds/Omnicurls
Summary: Women in love capitulate, or so Erik believed.
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera & Meg Giry, Erik | Phantom of the Opera/Meg Giry, Meg - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	When in Love

Women in love capitulated. It was a strange phenomenon, but it was the truth. They turned brave and weak; jumping in front of bullets to save their love and accepting the height of indignity just for a token of affection thrown callously to them. They would give up family and honour, their futures and their dreams, just for the hope of returned affection. That was what he believed. He had seen it in opera, in plays, in every book that involved the heart. He had watched it unfold in the back rooms of the Opera Populaire. Women, no matter how strong, how daring, capitulated. 

Marguerite Giry seemed to have an inverse understanding of this fact of life. She had not loved him when she swallowed her fear and waded down into his catacombs to find him. She had barely known him when she risked her freedom and hid him from the police. She said it was a ‘faith in humanity’ that spurred her to help him escape even though that meant leaving behind her home and fleeing with him. She had fallen in love with him much later, but he had seen it in the frequent blushes that coloured her cheeks, in the brightness of her eyes whenever she spoke to him, and in the near unconscious manner in which she shrugged off the compliments and advances of other men.

She was a fool to have fallen for a man like himself. He never paid much attention to why she loved him; he only looked at how he could steer that girlish infatuation to meet him ends. A capitulated Meg Giry was a tool to gain access to Christine, an enchanting asset he could use to squeeze himself into the life of an opera and ballet house, and the perfect unquestioning middle-man that could ease him into society. But she was inexperienced in the matters of love, so she failed to play the part as scripted.

He had asked that she, newly appointed prima ballerina, demand her tour double their time in Paris, and she had hesitated. He had charmed her with quiet walks, tender touches, and the idea that he might see her as indispensable to his life. She had blushed, gone coy with the overwhelming excitement of a young woman in love, and yet she had still refused him citing that her manager believed it would be in her best interest to perform in as many cities as possible, cutting Vienna from her touring schedule was simply irresponsible.

He was furious. She had given in to her foppish manager and not him? Was it not him she loved? He had threatened to part with her, and although she shed a few tears, she never changed her mind. He was sour and bitter, but had no choice but to leave Paris with her tour because what advantages did he have except her pliable love for him?

She had refused to fire her manager and appoint him her manager, at his request. She claimed to respect him, she claimed to revere his talent, she claimed all sorts of praises that, to him, were moot because she still refused to give in to him. What kind of love was this? _She_ loved _him_. It was meant to be easy for him, yet every time he tried to steer her, she resisted. Every time he tried to bend her to prove her love for him, she steeled herself against his manipulations. Of what use was her love for him if all she did was refuse him?

It all came to a head on the deck of the ship as they sailed back across the Atlantic, leaving Europe, and his dreams of finding Christine, behind. He had summoned her to his room, and she had refused him. As always. Instead, she had asked they meet on the deck and, with no choice, he had been forced to acquiesce.

She tiptoed around his anger, allowing him his petulance. “You could have stayed behind.” She said, her voice was soft and hurt, but resolute as iron, “It would have hurt to see you leave, because I do love you… I think. But if Paris is what would have made you happy, if Christine is what -”

“Do not confuse a child’s infatuation with love; it is tiring to hear. What you claim is not love. Christine loved me; you say it with easy words, but she did as I asked.” He was trying to be cruel, he wanted to see the hurt in her eyes and take solace in the fact that he still held some power over her.

Where he wanted pain, he got surprise followed by an insulting pity. “Is that what you think love is? Doing your bidding? Christine loves Raoul and seeks to make him happy, she feared you and did not want to make you angry.”

“What do you know of life to speak about love? In love, you would do anything for the other person.” He had no more anger to give whenever she brought up Christine. In the past, he had gone red with rage, but she never shied away from the topic and he had been forced to deal with the hurt and embarrassment of that debacle.

“If it is reciprocated. Christine would sacrifice herself for Raoul because she knows he would do the same. You want me, in the name of love, to sacrifice my career and my dignity for you? I may love you, but I do not trust you.”

She might as well have slapped him. He had thought her recalcitrant and stubborn, but all this time she had thought of him as something to protect herself against? “Have I ever given you reason to distrust me?”

“Yes.” Another verbal slap, given with her usual open sincerity. “I may be young, but I am not naïve. I grew up shielding Christine from a lot of the realities of life in an Opera house. I know men like you, and I see what you try to do. You wanted to use Christine as a weapon against my feelings for you, so I would think I was inadequate. Now we talk about her so much it means nothing to me. You try to make me meet you in your room so I would feel sullied and lesser as an unwed woman in a man’s room, and you could wield that shame against me. I tell myself you care for me in your own way, but sometimes I question even that vague concept. If I let you be my manager, you would kill my career so I would have nothing but you. At sixteen, I went down into your lair alone ahead of a raging mob, I smuggled you out of a city, and somehow you do not see that I would have a little bit more life experience than to fall for your open manipulations? This is how I know I cannot sacrifice my happiness for you; you do not see me, talk less of see my happiness.”

She had not raged, she had not cried, she had not exhausted herself with any excessive displays of emotion. She spoke with the resigned calm of a woman who had accepted the bitter pill of reality. “I loved you Erik, but I never trusted you and I would not put my fate in the hands of a man I could not trust.”

She had unbalanced him. For the first time in his life, someone had stripped him bare and called him for what he was. For the first time in many years, Erik tasted fear. “If I am so deceitful, so untrustworthy, then why are you still here?”

She was not her mother and she was not Christine. Somehow, he had made a grievous mistake in his assessment of her and it had taken him all these years to see the truth of her. She did not give and expect nothing in return, she did not project an unwarranted purity onto him. She would never have run errands for him while he tormented the opera house, and she would never have believed he was the ghost of her dead father. “We’ve been together for three years now and I loved you for nearly half of that time. It’d be a lie to say I do not enjoy having your around, but Erik, this is _my_ tour.”

He could have stopped to examine how they had gotten to this point, but his bruised ego would not allow him to think of anything but restitution. He had stayed with her for the same reason he had stayed with her mother; clutching to sympathy and affection for him so he could twist it into a weapon of control. But what was he to do with Meg who refused to bend to his will? Who saw him so clearly that she thwarted him at every step? He was to leave. If she believed she was so well off without him, then he would leave. See how she fared with only the shallow, twittering dancers of the ballet theatre for company.

The ship had docked in New York, and he immediately boarded the next one for Paris. There was no goodbye, no informing her of his decision. He disappeared from ‘her’ tour, as she had so clearly phrased it.

On the way to Paris he cursed himself for attaching so tightly to Meg Giry. He had seen the promise of a very useful asset, but he should have abandoned her once he realized that she could not be controlled. He had stayed month after month, playing that losing game of push and pull wherein she promised him everything by declaring her love for him but, in reality, gave him nothing.

He spent the first five days of the trip cursing her for being the viper that she was and cursing himself for being so careless as to make himself transparent to a child. He spent the next five days telling himself he did not miss her companionship. Three years, for someone who was used to solitude, was a long time to spend with someone and now she was farther and farther away from him.

It was the Paris disagreement that had truly broken them; until then they had been good companions. The same eye she had used to dress him down, she had used to understand and support him. The same steel she used to resist his machinations, had made her competent enough for him to rely on her without second thought or worry. Her honesty, brutal and painful, meant he could trust her with his life. Yet she had never felt she could trust him. Scheming Delilah she was, never handing over her trust and yet making him turn to her for companionship and support.

At the end of the first ten days, Erik finally asked himself why she loved him. Another five days passed, and all he had managed to do was come up with a list of reasons why she should not.

The ship docked in Paris, and he did not have a plan as to how he would find Christine alone. He tried to focus, tried to push thoughts of Meg, her betrayal, and her insults aside. But three years was a lot to push aside and the loneliness he had grown up with was now a foreign foe hellbent on destroying his sanity. He could not do something as simple as step out into the night without thinking of what she would say if she were with him, or what she was doing at this very moment. He found himself converting the time between them to keep of track of her day. When he read, he marked down comments and passages she would have appreciated. Though he knew she did not deserve them.

It was not until he finally had Christine alone, he, in the shadows, she, none the wiser, that he finally asked himself the question he had not realized he was avoiding.

Then what?

He won Christine, they galloped off into the night, and Meg? He gave her up? He never wanted her in the first place, and surely all he felt to her was an attachment borne from years of voluntarily staying by her side, but still the thought of her out of his life was bile in his mouth. He wanted to say Christine was a better companion for him, but he knew she was too innocent. She had spent her time in the world looking to the side or above, shielded from the harshness of life by Meg and now by her viscount. Meg, innocent as she looked, never looked away. She saw the darkness and unfairness of life and reckoned with it. That was how at nineteen she had seen nearly this thirty-three years’ worth of life. Christine would be the perfect partner for his music, so long as he poured it into her, but what happened when the curtain fell?

What was he doing? He had a life in New York. He had built a world for himself, and he was about to sacrifice it all. It should have felt right, after all, it was for love. But it did not. Meg’s words came to him, unbidden, and he found his traitorous mind wondering what Christine would give for him. She had been willing to trade her freedom for the viscount, but what was he, Erik, worth to her? He wanted to call out to her, but he knew what he would see in her face – fear. If, and when, she did do as he demanded, would it be out of fear or love?

If Meg ever gave in to his desires, he would know it was out of love. The way she had spoken to him on the ship was enough to dispel any fancies that she would ever fear him. In truth, she had sacrificed for him – though not in the way he wanted. She had told him he could leave her side and return to Paris, knowing it was for another woman, even though she still confessed to loving him. _‘I think’_.

Erik pressed his fist against his mouth and closed his eyes. The quiet realisation was ice against his spine. He thought back to the night on the ship, he thought back carefully to their conversation. She had said ‘I love you. I think’ and that she had ‘loved him’ – past tense – for nearly a year and a half. Surely it was a mistake on her part; love did not die in a year and a half. He was the same man he had always been, so how would she have gone from declaring a wholehearted love for him, to not certain? He had been so angered at her refusal to extend her tour in Paris, that he had missed the significance of her words. 

He felt his stomach turn and he thought he would retch. His body went cold. His fist shook against his lips. He dropped to one knee, tired, and feeling as though he may faint.

He had pushed her in Paris, over and over again he had pushed her to stay, he had belittled her dancing in hopes that, to win his approval, she would give in to his demands of staying longer in Paris. He had extolled Christine’s praises while criticizing her character. He had never congratulated her after a performance; he had done all he could to make her need his approval.

When that failed, he had turned into a charming gentleman with endless flowers and deep compliments.

When that too failed, he had turned to anger and left. She had accepted all his flaws so far, why would this brand of selfishness be any different? She loved him, and love was endless… right?

He did not notice when Christine left; he was too preoccupied with plans to New York that very day. He was the last to board the ship that night and all the way back to New York he fretted. He went back to their last conversation over and over again. One time, he would convince himself that there was nothing amiss. Another time, he would see all the ways in which he had finally worn her down. But could she say she truly loved him, if she gave up so easily?

He thought when he returned to New York he would find Meg sullenly waiting for his return. He would show up in a flourish of his cape, and she would be tearfully glad to see that he had come back to her, but of course with a pride like hers she would try to hide it. But she was not at home waiting for him, nor was she in her dressing room pondering when he would return. He found at her rehearsal, between sets, laughing with her partner. She looked happy and, he had not known this but, the ‘shallow, twittering dancers’ were her friends.

He thought to make himself known and approach her but seeing her life from this distance, he could not find the words with which to speak to her. He had never bothered to see her beyond what he desired from her; after all, she was there to help him escape, there to help him blend into society, there to help him rebuild his life, and simply there to help him achieve his ends. Seeing her now, he realized that there was a whole facet of her life he had elected to remain ignorant of. She had a happiness without him, a life without him, companionship without him. She was right; _he_ was the one who had stayed.

A man, tall and swarthy peeked backstage and the laughter of the dancers faded into conspiratorial whispers. The man wrapped his nervousness in a cloak of arrogance, much in a way that reminded Erik of himself. He held a bouquet of flowers to Meg, “As you did not have time for me after your last performance, I have no choice but to impose upon your rehearsal.”

Erik rolled his eyes at the gall. He had seen his kind come and go over the years. Some were persistent, no doubt, but she always dismissed them politely, yet firmly. It was times like this, in her rejection of her suitors, that the declarations of her love for him made sense to him.

“This is the repercussion of my not making time for you?” She asked with a half laugh and accepted the flowers.

“Then we will make sure she never has time for you after performances.” Her partner led the laughter of the other five dancers on stage. Erik's hands folded into involuntary fists. In days gone by, he would have killed him. Never would he have believed that he would have thoughts of killing a man because of Meg Giry, but here he was.

“Ignore Philip.” Meg cast a sharp glance at her partner before looking back to her visitor, “Thank you for these, but I must get back to the stage.”

“If this isn’t enough to earn your attention, I will have to find increasingly ridiculous ways to do so, Miss Giry.” He called after her. He was grinning like a fool.

She turned and graced him with a smile, “My friends call me Meg.”

She was not rejecting this joke of a man. Erik felt physically ill as the same chill from when he realized she had spoken of her love for him in the past tense overcame him. Despite her not completely surrendering to him in the name of love, despite her love obviously fading and the proof before him that her eye was beginning to wander, he found he did not question that she had loved him – he had only hated that she did not express it in a way that was useful to him.He knew that she had proven it time and time again, but he could not put his finger on _how_. 

She had loved him. He could not live without her. But now, she was drifting away and he feared she might be too far out to catch.

What was he to do? If love was not sacrifice no matter the cost, if love was not total and complete surrender, if love was not eternal, then what was it? What did men in love do?


End file.
